How To Get Real Political Bang For Donors’ Bucks

Charles and David Koch told their donors in January of this year that they need $889 million of their donors’ money to achieve their intended wins at the ballot box in 2016. They have been spending money like this for several years now, and what have they achieved? Obamacare? Dodd-Frank? More federal debt? More job-crushing EPA regulations and Energy Dept. regulations?

And, now, despite all of the money the Koch brothers’ donors have given to them, they get to watch Republican Party primary “debates” run by cable news networks with “moderators” setting the agenda through their questions instead of real debates run by the Republican National Committee or the candidates themselves where the candidates get to ask each other questions of their own choosing.

Would a Republican National Committee with a majority of conservative members elect a more conservative chairman who would do away with these silly “not debates?” Of course.

But we don’t have an RNC with a majority of conservatives among its 168 members.

How do we conservatives achieve that?

Maybe another strategy ought to be considered.

A New Political Strategy That Would Get Real Political Results

Here is a proposal for the Koch brothers’ donors on how they can actually change the Republican Party in a way that would favor conservative candidates in the primary elections and the internal Party officer elections – including all the way “up” to the RNC.

The Greatest Open Secret In Republican Party Politics

The greatest open secret in politics is that the Republican Party apparatus is weakest where it ought to be strongest: at the precinct level.

All RNC member slots are filled. All state committee officer positions are filled. Virtually all county and local district committee officer positions are filled.

But, only about half of the precinct-level positions, which elect, directly, or indirectly, all of these Party officers, are filled. It’s been estimated that the Republican Party has about 400,000 of these precinct-level internal voting positions (called precinct committeeman in most states). It’s been estimated that about 200,000 of these positions are vacant.

And the RNC does not want any one, especially conservatives who want to “do something” politically, to know this. Have you ever received a letter from the RNC asking you to get involved in your party as a voting member of it on your local committee, where you can cast votes for the Party leadership?

Have you ever wanted to be in a position to cast a vote for who is your county chairman? Your state chairman? Has anyone from the Party told you how you can get into that position? Again, have you ever received a letter from the RNC asking you to become a precinct committeeman where you live?

You haven’t, if you get the same letters I receive. The RNC asks for your time, your effort, your money. But they do not ask you to become a voting member of the Party on your local committee. And those letters are proof of that.

So let’s assume that the Koch brothers’ donors decided to devote just $10 million to an effort to recruit each of the 200,000 conservatives needed to bring the Republican precinct-level apparatus to full strength. That would average out to $50 spent to recruit each precinct committeeman. And leave the Koch brothers $879 million for their other efforts.

Or let’s say they wanted to be more aggressive and spend twice that sum, or $20 million for recruiting conservatives into the 200,000 currently vacant Republican Party precinct committeeman slots – that would leave them with $869 million to work with. And, in both cases, they would be on their way to changing the Republican Party apparatus, from the voting precincts, to the local district committees, to the county committees, to the state committees and all the way “up” to the RNC and its chairman position, from a half-strength, ideologically-split political party into a full-strength, solidly-conservative, get-out-the-vote political powerhouse.

The Koch brothers and their donors would have a new asset: The Republican Party itself. Instead of trying to do an end run around the Republican Party, they’d BE the Party.

Perhaps some other group of conservatives will beat them to the punch.